Note: This is about my millionth draft of a testimony I was asked to give at our women’s retreat. It is not really intended to be read, but to be heard with some off-the-cuff comments thrown in. I hope that, if you are reading it now, you are encouraged by it.
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I started writing this testimony late one night into an early morning. It was a series of torturous hours in which sleep would not find me. I rehashed all the events, put a spotlight on all the bitter details, in an attempt to force it all to make sense. I finally came to the realization that, if we purpose to see through God’s eyes, these things will never make sense, because none of it was ever HIS will.
Anyway, in a testimony, you want to hear how I’ve come out better on the other side… how things are made new in the power of God’s healing. I can testify to that, but also to the fact that I have a long way to go in trusting Him to reach an ultimate end. But I wonder, even in eternity, do we reach an ultimate end? Are we getting ourselves to some observable point? Or do we continue to grow and expand into the absolute WONDER of who HE IS? That’s what I choose to believe. We’re not working toward an end at all, but a glorious new beginning!!!!! Isn’t that so incredible? Doesn’t it give you goosebumps to think of what we might be doing 400… 1000 years from now? And lest you think I came up with that on my own… NOPE… I have to credit Dallas Willard with that idea. And if you need some relief I suggest going on YouTube and finding his Renovation of the Heart talks for free. They are life-changing.
Here’s the deal… and it really is the deck we’re all handed. We might rehash it all in the way I attempted to that night into early morning. We might become bitter. I know I have shared and maybe even poisoned others with my bitterness, many, many, many times under this glowing banner of TRANSPARENCY. What I want to say here is this. It takes humility. It takes becoming a blubbering, sobbing, childish, almost screaming mess in front of your pastor and your friend (his wife) that you so greatly admire. It takes owning your own culpability in the messes of your own life to get you to the place where you realize that, yes, this horrible thing happened. LOTS of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, things happened, to get the people that you love SO MUCH to what feels like this hopeless place. NONE OF THEM WERE GOD’S WILL!
BUT HE IS SOVEREIGN!!! Let me say that again. HE IS SOVEREIGN…He knows… and He loves us despite it all. He deems us “worth it” with this crazy “no-matter what” love that He showers on us… a love we, frankly, are at a loss most of the time, to understand in our current state.
And somehow He takes all our less-than-perfect moments and turns them all over for His Glory… His Plan. It’s the only thing that allows all this to make sense in my heart. It’s the only thing that allows me to forgive some major hurts from some major people in my life. It’s the only way I can forgive myself.
I’ve been in a very dark place. Some of you are there with me now. I know some of your stories. Some of you, I can only guess at because you’re not quite as “out there” with all the messes as I tend to be. I think the psychological term for it is “extroverted feeling”. Well, whether you’re an extroverted or introverted feeler, I want to give you this word of hope.
If you’re like me and your family of origin was not ever the source of strength, encouragement, and pride that you hoped it would be, can I share something with you? You might be further along the road than you think. Maybe even further than folks that grew up in such a “wished for” way. You’ve been required, like me, to seek out encouragement from women-of-faith authors like Elisabeth Elliot, faithful women in your church like Nan Wilcox, women like Mary Elizabeth Erwin (my incredible piano teacher and mentor), and like Karen Allen, my precious mother-in-law. You’ve been required to go to men like Asa Low (a choral director for six years who was more a surrogate spiritual father than a music teacher), like Bill Wilcox, like my husband, and even a crotchety, atheist botany professor that found you oddly unique in your love for God and their favorite branch of science. These men and women were placed in my path ON PURPOSE. My parents are my parents ON PURPOSE. They brought me to some of these other helpers in my life out of their love for me and in their own seeking through this same lack that I feel! I have friends like Erin Thompson, Lori Horner, Jennifer Dyer (a best friend forever since the first day of kindergarten), Lisa Neisler who lost a brother in much the same way, and Regina Gossage. They all know me a little too well, and still love me, and love ON me despite that fact. We all have this Body of Christ to hold us up if we will just see it, acknowledge it, and find gratitude for it. We have the Holy Spirit to help us. We have the Word of God, which has been such a light to me over the past year and a quarter now as we’ve read it together as a church Body.
And maybe you are new to this BRBC body of believers. If you are the newbie, as I have been too many times, take it as your personal responsibility from God to take part in this body no matter how introverted or shy you might be. Someone else here knows that feeling. I’m one of those people, standing before you today, who used to come to Blue Ridge with my Bible and a bag full of book covers to hide behind. I will be here and make myself available to draw you in, and I charge the rest of the inhabitants of this room to do the same, no matter how entrenched you are in your comfortable networks.
I’ll end the way you probably think I should have begun. I officially came to Christ on All Saint’s Day, 1983. In all honesty, I believe I was a follower much earlier than that, and I have stepped away and walked back onto the “straight and narrow,” more times than I care to count. I remember, at the age of 3 or 4, “helping” my mother dig weeds out of our gravel driveway under a young live oak tree and a huge Texas sky. I asked her that day, “Mama, how big is God?” She wisely replied, “God can be any size he wants to be. He can be big enough to fill the whole sky or he can be small enough to fit on the cushion of that dandelion you’re holding in your hand.” I marveled at that thought. And she was right of course. And in all of our failing and falling and trying to get back up again, He will always be big enough to fit whatever situation we find ourselves in.
DON’T ever doubt that He uses others, He gifts others, He uses His creation and other’s ability to manipulate it into things like medications to help us when we need it. As the quintessential eldest child, I’ve burdened myself most of my life with the ridiculous notion that I can and should do it all on my own. I am currently on a medication to help me manage debilitating panic attacks. I spent three years with those attacks before I finally gave in and tried the meds. I had to swallow a lot of misplaced pride to seek that help. He uses what He wishes… He chides as He wishes. He requires humility throughout, accompanying the admission that we CANNOT do it all on our own. We ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT be independent in this. We require help. As long as we inhabit these bodies, we are still a part of a fallen creation. We have what we need to live a life that glorifies Him, but we do not have all the answers… not yet.
Most of you know… some of you may not… that my brother passed away tragically last May, leaving behind 5 young children. We were in the hospital with him for nine agonizing days as we watched him improve and then deteriorate again. He and I and my middle brother, Aaron, were the children of deeply-wounded parents who did their absolute best under the circumstances. I choose not to go into all the ways that my childhood and family life was hard and hurtful today… ways watching my brother die dredged up all sorts of unresolved issues from those years. I want instead to explain what continues to bring beauty from literal ashes… Joshua’s ashes.
Throughout the months following Josh’s death, something began to happen. I know people were praying. I was praying too. And somewhere in that space a little tendril of understanding began to wind its way around and through my heart. That tendril found its way into atriums and ventricles that had been hardened with bitterness, like asphalt, for decades. That tiny tendril grew until it burst through, revealing tender pink flesh. It slowly put on lovely, heart-shaped leaves, like the leaves of a sunflower. Eventually, the holy whispers of the Spirit stirred those leaves and tendrils. In quieter moments I could almost begin to hear amidst the sigh of that breeze, “I am sovereign. My plan is good. I am good. I have provided for you. You have family. You have me. You have my Word. You have my Body broken for you. You have the promise of eternity. You are free in Me no matter how bound you feel by circumstance.”
God’s Word, read as a Body… I am still hungry, still grasping for all that truth in a framework prayed for and set about by our Blue Ridge leadership. The people that were there for me just moments after I received tragic news of my brother Josh, and offered an ear (in the middle of the BRBC sanctuary I might add) but also offered space for me to manage in my own way without judgement (You know who you are.). It was the Body of Christ broken for me… God’s Spirit indwelling me… helping me in ways I can’t even explain to you because that would require a purer language than I’ve yet learned to speak.
And please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not knocking counseling or transparency… even help from a psychologist or psychiatrist here. PLEASE… for your sake and your families’ sake, GET IT! I have, and I’m better for it. I will continue to do so when I need it… and I will need it. My family and my marriage are better for it. However, you’d better make sure your counselors/therapists/and psychiatrists are grounded in TRUTH before you give them the gift of your time and money. They help. They are gifted with the skills they possess for a reason by a loving God… FOR YOU! Sometimes you have to unload the attic and spread all that heavy stuff out before you to find the thing that is taking up too much space and making the entire ceiling sag. In time, you can offload the heavy stuff, and add back the good stuff!
But please hear this if you don’t hear anything else while I’m standing here. Anytime we begin to operate out of OUR wounds and not His, we’re done for. I know. I’ve been the repository for the wounds of my family for ages… and I’ve acted out of my own wounds for nearly 50 years now. It doesn’t work. I repeat. IT DOES NOT WORK. When we start to view life through the lens of the powerlessness of our own hurt, out of some victim identity and refuse to see the POWER in his pain… His blood… His body broken for us, we will flounder, just like Peter when he was called out onto the water with Jesus. As soon as He took his eyes off his Redeemer and got an eyeful of his own situation, he began to sink again. When we forget to see the purpose in His pain… when we forget that His pain was suffered for us… we make little gods of our own troubles. We idolize our own stories and glorify ourselves in the process.
A truth I want to leave you with is also an image that has held me through so many moments when I was “tempted to despair”.
He became the sinless, spotless, perfect sacrifice making every member of my family and yours absolutely worth it… worth the pain and suffering and anxiety and sadness… and… no matter what insecurity or fear we suffer with, making US absolutely worth it as well… worth it all, because of what He did on the cross. Imagine with me a word picture first presented to me by J.P. Moreland in his book Finding Quiet and now, in this space with you, amplified by me. When I close my eyes, I see my heart space almost as an open window in late spring, with a vivid green, tree-lined meadow in the distance. That vibrant green vine that I described before, that tendril of understanding, is growing all along and around the heart-shaped window (Maybe tell them about a subject you can talk about one-on-one — the science behind this “extra” brain we have surrounding our physical hearts.). The Holy Spirit is stirring the leaves… whispering His help to my heart and to yours. I place my hands over my heart and imagine a nail-scarred hand covering mine. And I imagine His head bowed, Our High Priest’s wounded brow just millimeters from my own. And He’s praying… He’s praying specifically for me right now… interceding for me… just as He is for you… forever… our High Priest forever. This is real stuff. This isn’t a flight of fancy. This is Bible truth and it is happening for all who trust in His Name at this very second. Let’s do that together. Let’s put our hands over our hearts and bow with our High Priest. Let’s pour out our hearts to Him as he pours out His holy heart to the Father. How powerful and comforting is that image? I imagine that one glorious day, my spirit self will climb through that space, that heart-shaped window, and out of this fallen shell of a body. We’ll crawl into those Eternal Hands and Arms…the “Everlasting Arms” that lie underneath it all. Let’s pray silently together and then, if you will allow me, I will intercede for you a few moments as we close our time together. God bless you.
Maybe pray through Hebrews 8ish – 10ish… the description of the Perfect Sacrifice, once forever…
Soccer and Shakespeare 